Sublime

The live bough bends. The dead twig snaps.

Now the one thing this article didn’t seem to me to consider was how a girl felt.

She could almost hear her mind pacing within her skull, caged and bothered, and she felt the weight of all the years she had yet to live, bearing down upon her with heavy menace.

Here, words freeze in the open air, and whole sentences must be broken from the speaker’s lips and thawed at the fire so people can see what has been said.

Every daughter / has a cage around her head / and a mother on the cross. / I always hope to take it off, and rarely do. / Instead, I climb up, like a child into the bed. / I nail myself beside you.

“My heart is on fire; but my eyes are as cold as ashes.”